


we're here for the cult shit

by onceandforall



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Buzzfeed Unsolved Fusion, Comedy, Discussions of Drowning, Discussions of death, Light-Hearted, Love Confessions, M/M, Supernatural Elements, YouTube
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:42:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28271097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onceandforall/pseuds/onceandforall
Summary: Oikawa believes in aliens, not ghosts. There’s proof with aliens: the pictures, the first-hand encounters, the entirety of Area 52. But ghosts? Debatable. A curse? Debatable. The supernatural? Debatable.Oikawa doesn’t believe in all of that stuff.It’s going to be his downfall, Sugawara just knows it.
Relationships: Oikawa Tooru/Sugawara Koushi
Comments: 13
Kudos: 77





	we're here for the cult shit

**Author's Note:**

> if you told my 2014 self i would be obsessively writing hq fanfic in 2020 i would have laughed in your face. but ig 2020 is full of surprises! the assortment of characters, i realize, is completely random. but ya know what, i just wanted all of my fav chars to interact. 
> 
> this is meant to be silly ~ 
> 
> (also quick shoutout to both my betas for reading this somewhat fandom blind. literally the best ppl in the world.) 
> 
> enjoy!  
> once

It starts with how most things in Sugawara’s life starts: an erratic message from Oikawa, Sugawara’s long time friend, co-host to their growing supernatural investigation video series, and most recently the object of his infatuation.

Sugawara is still trying to deny that last part, so he won’t bring that up again. At least for a little while.

Back to the matter at hand: the phone in Sugawara’s hand, to be more precise. It’s been buzzing nonstop for the last thirty seconds. Sugawara doesn’t want to look at his phone. He really, really doesn’t. He’s annoyed at Oikawa right now— Oikawa thought it would be a _great_ idea to crack a joke in the middle of a purification ritual and the interruption caused Sugawara’s concentration to slip for a second, a very important second. So Sugawara wants nothing more than to ice him out for a few hours. But if his phone rings one more time, then he knows Daichi will answer it for him.

That’s just the Daichi thing to do, especially when they’re in the middle of dinner.

`**Oikawa (*≧∀≦*):**  
sos  
koushi are you there  
there is a weird rash on my arm  
and it feels kind of numb  
that’s weird right?  
feels weird  
can i send you a picture?  
lol if i poke the rash it changes color  
i’m gonna send u the pic and then put on some hydrocortisone cream  
shit it’s expired  
it should still work tho right? `

“Something wrong?” Daichi asks, pushing his fish around his plate with his chopsticks. “I know that Oikawa usually likes blowing up your phone but—” Daichi passes his chopstick-free hand across his face— “your expression is kind of dark.”

Sugawara’s phone buzzes with another message. It’s a picture this time. A mirror selfie of Oikawa, with the left sleeve of his shirt bunched up and being held by his chin. (Any other day, Sugawara would love to be getting selfies from Oikawa.) On the top of Oikawa’s arm is a purple colored rash in the shape of—

It’s in the shape of a coin.

Which is the cursed object they were dealing with today when Oikawa just so happened to disrupt the purification ritual.

Sugawara puts his phone down, sinks deep into his chair until his body is half-hanging off of the furniture, and sighs.

“I’m going to take that as a sign that something is wrong,” Daichi says.

All Sugawara does is sigh. What he really wants to do is travel across the city and smack Oikawa across his face. And then scream into a pillow. Maybe not exactly in that order. Maybe exactly in that order. Sugawara doesn’t know.

“He’s cursed,” Sugawara says after taking a moment to compose himself. He rights himself in the chair and forces himself to at least look at his food. He’s lost his appetite, but he knows that he needs to try and eat at least something so he has enough energy to beat some sense into Oikawa later. “The curse that we were dealing with today. I _thought_ we cleansed it out, but _apparently_ it just latched onto him. He’s cursed.” Sugawara bites out his words, harsh and pointed.

“Oh.” Daichi’s face doesn’t exactly fall, but he goes into that Daichi thinking mode where his features are all flat and Sugawara can practically hear the gears in his head turning. But Sugawara doesn’t want to think about solutions right now. He just wants to scream.

Because getting cursed is bad enough. But Oikawa? He doesn’t even believe in curses. He’s going to find this entire thing funny while the curse slowly (God, hopefully slowly.) devours him alive.

Sugawara’s screwed.

The gears in Daichi’s head stop twirling with an audible clink.

Wait, back up. That noise isn’t coming from Daichi’s head.

It’s coming from the empty glass that Daichi has just put in front of Sugawara. Daichi nods, a sharp and quick motion. Sugawara takes the glass, puts it up against his mouth, and screams into it.

Sugawara wipes his mouth and hands the glass back to Daichi. “Thanks. I needed that.”

“Screaming into a jar is better, but I don’t think I have any jars,” Daichi says, taking the glass to the kitchen and putting it into the sink.

Screaming into a jar is better. Sugawara has plenty of jars at home so he can scream into them— an occupational hazard of working with someone like Oikawa who, despite being the one to even suggest that they start a supernatural investigation video series, doesn’t actually believe in the supernatural.

And now Oikawa is cursed. He doesn’t even believe in curses. This is going to be a tough bind to get themselves out of.

* * *

Kenma scrunches up his nose when Sugawara tells him what is going on. It’s the next day, which means that Sugawara had the entire night to sleep on the fact that Oikawa is cursed. Except he didn’t really sleep on it. He spent most of the night tossing and turning in his bed. His pillow was too hot and then the other side was too cold. His sheets were bunched all of the way down, making it uncomfortable. His blankets were too rough. The moonlight was too bright.

The general gist is that Sugawara did not sleep well. And the two hours of sleep that he did manage to get were spoiled with god awful nightmares of the curse taking over Oikawa’s body and suffocating him to death. In his dying moments, dream-Oikawa refused to believe that anything supernatural related even existed.

Sugawara woke up equal parts horrified and pissed off. Not a good combination. He made it to the office with his third coffee since six am in his hand. Kenma, already sitting at his desk and typing away at what Sugawara is pretty sure a discord chat, was the first person that he saw. Between the sleep deprivation from the night before and the hyperactivity the caffeine was giving him, Sugawara found himself word vomiting the entire previous day’s happenings to Kenma.

Kenma, to the surprise of no one, isn’t amused. Out of everyone in their small team, Kenma takes all the ghostly and demonic stuff the most seriously. “He’s going to die.”

Sugawara downs the rest of his coffee in one go. Oikawa usually brings him coffee in the morning as he gets to work and Sugawara really wants that extra cup of coffee right now. “Let’s not think about that this early in the morning.”

“What are we not thinking about?” Ennoshita asks, walking into the office. Sugawara thinks there needs to be a little bit of explaining here. But he’s going to be brief about it: it might be only nine in the morning, but he’s already run out of patience for the day.

A few years ago, in the middle of the night after drinking three glasses of wine too many, Oikawa and Sugawara had the brilliant idea of starting their own Youtube series. It was simple: they found weird, supernatural things happening across the country and investigated them in the hopes of proving once and for all if the supernatural even existed.

Sugawara believed yes, they did exist. He’s had plenty of mildly ghostly activities in his life to confirm the supernatural does in fact exist. Oikawa, while the boy has poured hours and plenty of cold, hard cash into his obsession with aliens, was going to take some convincing. They never thought they were going to get far with their videos, but here they are three years later: with an entire team and a quarter of a floor in a high-rise building in downtown Tokyo to call their own.

Sugawara and Oikawa are still the co-hosts, though their tech manager Kuroo manages to get into enough of their shots to be considered their pseudo third host. Then there is Kenma, who is in charge of both their social media and their video editing. And last but in no way shape or form the least, their director Ennoshita.

Granted, Ennoshita does do a _lot_ more than directing their videos. He is the one to organize their meetings, get them all on the correct email chains, make sure there is enough coffee creamer in the fridge. He makes sure things are running correctly. They wouldn’t be nearly as functional if Ennoshita wasn’t the one doing all the behind the scenes work.

And so when Sugawara quickly explains what’s going on, it’s no surprise that Ennoshita takes a second to compose himself before forming a response.

“Please tell me you’re kidding,” he says, running a hand through his hair. “He can’t be cursed. I literally watched you do the cleansing ritual yesterday morning.”

“I did.” Sugawara sighs. He’s been doing too much sighing. He knows exactly what went wrong. It was supposed to be simple: investigate this small object that seems to kill every single person that has ever owned it and then cleanse it.

It had three owners total. The first was a sailor who had found it in the middle of his fishing net. He died a few days after that fishing trip. It was officially listed as a drowning, but the body was nowhere near any body of water.

Suspicious. But there wasn’t enough information to go off. Records could be old, or weird. Or both. In Sugawara’s experience, a lot of things in this field of work were both.

The object was lost for a little bit, but then it killed three more people in rapid succession. All of their causes of deaths were drowning. But none of them were found near water. There was no trace of water anywhere near them. Yet their lungs were full of water.

Drowned on dry land it seemed.

Weird, weird, weird.

“So what now?” Kenma asks.

Ennoshita sighs and takes out his phone. “We’re going to have to push today’s schedule back. We can’t do any of the planned recordings if Oikawa is cursed.”

Sugawara’s stomach turns in on itself. For some reason, there was something different about Oikawa being cursed when it was just in between Oikawa, Sugawara, and their text messages. (Well, and Daichi. But Daichi and Sugawara have been friends for so long that oftentimes Daichi feels like an extension of himself.) Not that it wasn’t real, of course not. But there’s something different about seeing both Ennoshita and Kenma’s reactions.

Fear. The difference is now that Sugawara is scared.

“He can’t die,” Sugawara says, his throat starting to close. All of his sudden, he’s able to feel everything in his body. He can feel his throat screaming at him. He can feel the air going into his nose. He can feel his hand wrapped around his empty coffee cup. He can feel the blood pulsing in his veins, hot and erratic. He can feel everything move and move and move until it all feels chaotic, on the verge of being out of his control.

Kenma isn’t one to initiate physical touch. Sugawara can count on one hand the number of times that Kenma was the first one to touch him, that’s including the time that Kenma caught Sugawara after Sugawara tripped over his own shoelaces.

But Kenma touches him now, just grabs his wrist and squeezes it tight. The sudden movement jerks Sugawara out of his budding panic attack and back into reality. He forces himself to take a deep breath and look at Kenma.

Kenma nods at him. Sugawara nods back.

Kenma drops his grip. “Oikawa is not going to die,” Kenma says. “If he dies then we’re all out of a job. So he can’t die.”

A laugh finds its way out of Ennoshita’s mouth. “Is that really the angle that you’re going to be taking on this?”

“What? He’s charismatic, one of our only two hosts. Who else is supposed to replace him?”

Sugawara can’t help but roll his eyes. The tension in the room has dissipated. Maybe it was just in Sugawara’s head the entire time. He always did have a tendency to think about things a bit too practically. (Read: pessimistically.)

Ennoshita shrugs. “I don’t know.” He turns his attention back to his phone and taps away. “I’m going to send out the new itinerary soon. Please update both your calendars.” Ennoshita puts his phone away and then walks all of two feet to his desk.

They really need a bigger office space. They really need more workers, too.

Kenma gives Sugawara a small smile and then he turns in his chair, automatically typing away at his computer. Sugawara gives himself a moment to get it all together (His nerves, his mind, the slight tremor in his hand from ingesting too much caffeine.), and then turns to walk to his own cubicle.

But he barely takes a step when the man of the hour walks into the office.

Oikawa looks exhausted, and that’s saying something because Sugawara knows that Oikawa is able to coast on four hours of sleep with only a dab of concealer and still manage to look as if he has all of his shit together. His hair is a rat's nest of knots and tangles. His clothes are full of wrinkles and his shirt even has a small stain on it.

And the most telling feature of them all is that he’s wearing his glasses. Oikawa _never_ wears his glasses, especially not on a recording day.

(“The fans must never know that my eyesight is my poorest quality,” Oikawa had once said right after Sugawara watched in horror as Oikawa jammed a contact into his eye. Sugawara never watched him put in his contacts ever again.)

“Koushi!” Oikawa says, smiling and waving at Sugawara. Oikawa might look like a mess, but he’s still acting like his too-peppy self. It’s a good sign. “Good morning.”

Sugawara narrows his eyes. He doesn’t know how to approach this situation. He wants to rush in, sit Oikawa down, and go through an entire purifying process. But he knows that all Oikawa will do is shrug him off and tell Sugawara he’s being silly. But what else is Sugawara supposed to do? Watch the curse take over Oikawa’s body?

Sugawara doesn’t think he has the strength to go through something like that.

“Hey, if it isn’t the cursed boy,” Ennoshita says, sticking his head out of his cubicle. “I cleared out the schedule so we could fix your curse thing. How did you even get that?”

“I’m going through our archives to find a purification for this type of thing,” Kenma inputs. “I’ll have something put together before our morning briefing.”

Sugawara exhales. Their team is reliable, trustworthy. (Even if they are missing a member. Kuroo tends to run a minute slower than he should.) They’re going to get through this together.

There is just one problem: Oikawa himself.

“I’m not cursed,” Oikawa says. He pouts, which stopped being an effective strategy to the team about six months after they first started working together.

But the expression still does something weird to Sugawara’s chest. If he was hooked up to a heart rate monitor, there would have been a noticeable spike in his BPM. But there is nothing of the sort nearby, so Sugawara ignores his dumb, stupid heart.

“Um,” Ennoshita says. “That’s not what Sugawara said a few minutes ago.” He looks to Sugawara for support and Sugawara widens his eyes. Ennoshita seems to get the message immediately. It’s one of the reasons that Sugawara likes him so much. “Okay so even if you don’t think you’re cursed, I still think we should do something. Just to make sure.”

“But you’re cursed,” Kenma says. He rolls his chair out from his desk so he’s in the middle of their small hallway. “I just looked at the footage again and you can actually see the moment the curse transfers to you. It’s when you told your joke. I can show you, if you want.”

Oikawa scoffs. “You guys are way too into this stuff. There is no such thing as curses. I’m fine. We should just record today. I was looking forward to the Q&A.”

“Curse or not, I don’t think we should record today.” Sugawara shifts his weight from foot to foot, nervous energy coursing through his body and making him unable to stand still. Caffeine, sleep deprivation, and nervousness do not mix well together. Oikawa goes stiff at his words, turning a shade paler. All Sugawara wants to do is tuck Oikawa into bed and make him actually take care of himself for once.

“You’re cursed,” Kenma repeats.

And as if the universe is listening, it chooses that exact moment to make Oikawa collapse to the floor.

* * *

Oikawa wakes up approximately twenty two minutes and sixteen seconds later. Sugawara was counting, just in case he didn’t end up waking up and they needed to tell the EMTs everything that they could. Though Sugawara doubts that the EMTs would know what to do with a cursed individual.

Oikawa dropping to the floor surprised everyone into a stupor. Then Sugawara’s brain finally caught up to what he was seeing and he rushed to Oikawa. Luckily, he didn’t hit his head on the way down. With Ennoshita’s help, (Kenma rolled himself back into his cubicle and told them he’ll get started on researching the purification process on human bodies right away.) they managed to get Oikawa resting on the couch in the break room.

They didn’t know what to do then, so they waited.

Sugawara put a bottle of water on the table, right next to the glasses that he took off of Oikawa. The water seemed like a good thing to do in the moment. Ennoshita left and called Kuroo, because he was late and they kind of had an emergency on their hands.

And then Oikawa woke up.

There is nothing graceful about Oikawa waking up. His skin is clammy, his clothes sticking to him in an unflattering way, and the bags under his eyes are dark enough to look like fresh bruises. He looks even worse now than he did before he collapsed, but maybe that’s the harsh lighting of the break room. The fluorescents always tend to color things with a weird mood.

“God I have a hangover,” Oikawa says, wiggling around on the sofa with the little room that he has. It’s not a large sofa— they’ve never actually used the break room for anything of importance. But Sugawara guesses there is a first time for everything.

“What got you so drunk last night that you passed out at work?” The question comes from Kuroo, who stands in the doorway, acting cool and suave as if he didn’t just arrive right before Oikawa woke up. He told Ennoshita there was an accident that made all the busses late. Kenma told them Kuroo’s glasses-wearing boyfriend was back in town.

Whatever. At least Kuroo is here and able to help Sugawara with the mess that is Oikawa Tooru.

“Nothing,” Oikawa moans and Sugawara can feel himself flushing. This is not a good time, Sugawara reminds his heart. Oikawa might be _dying_ soon. His dumb, stupid crush can wait.

Kuroo scoffs. “So you drank nothing yet you said you’re hungover? Something isn’t adding up.”

“Shut up,” Oikawa says, throwing an arm over his head. His entire body shivers.“Koushi, can you turn off the light? I think I’m going to puke if I have to stare at it any longer.”

Sugawara turns off the light. It really doesn’t do much, as the hallway light is still as strong as ever.

“Oh so Suga gets a ‘Koushi’ and I get a ‘Shut up?’” Kuroo replies, mocking. Sugawara groans. He already knows where this is headed. Oikawa and Kuroo get along, but that’s not without them butting heads whenever they get the chance. “Good to know that your crush on _Koushi_ is still going strong.”

Sugawara, a few months ago, high for the first time since high school, confided to a giggly Kuroo his crush on Oikawa. Granted, Kuroo hasn’t ever broken that confidence. But he wrapped his little brain around the idea that his feelings are actually reciprocated. It drives Sugawara crazy.

“Shut up, Kuroo,” Sugawara bites. He doesn’t need Kuroo teasing him about his dumb crush right now. His words come out meaner than he intended them to, but it’s been a stressful morning and Sugawara isn’t having it.

Kuroo at least has the decency to actually shut up. He nods his head and then leaves, letting in even more hallway light with his absence. Sugawara feels horrible. He’ll apologize later, though, when Oikawa doesn’t look a step away from death’s door.

“Nice double kill,” Oikawa says, his arm still over his head, blocking his eyes. “I do actually feel hungover, if you were curious. And all that I had last night was water. So I don’t know what’s happening.” His voice trails off towards the end. Sugawara has to take a step closer to be able to hear him.

Sugawara keeps walking towards Oikawa, crossing the short distance and sitting himself down next to the couch. He’s sitting by Oikawa’s head and Sugawara can feel the heat radiating off of him. There’s a sickening aura around Oikawa’s entire being that makes Sugawara’s stomach curl up into a ball with anxiety.

“Koushi,” Oikawa says. His voice is nothing but a hushed breath of hot air. Sugawara turns his head and isn’t surprised to see that Oikawa is facing him, arm off of his face. There’s sweat gathering on his upper lip and Oikawa is sick and Sugawara really shouldn’t be looking at his lips like that. “I don’t think we should record today.”

Sugawara nods. He turns himself even more so he can put a hand on Oikawa’s face. Oikawa’s skin is soft, supple, _kissable_ and Sugawara is running his thumb down Oikawa’s jaw before he can even realize what his hand is doing. “I think that’s a good idea. You’re—”

“I forgot my contacts. I can’t record without my contacts on.”

The hand that was lazily making its way down Oikawa’s face freezes. “You’re… Oikawa you’re cursed. Your contacts don’t really matter right now.”

Oikawa shakes his head. The action seems to take a lot out of him. He winces. “I’m not cursed, Koushi. You’re just thinking about things too deeply.” He takes in a breath and lets it out in a slow movement. “Curses aren’t real.”

Sugawara takes his hand off of Oikawa’s face. “So if I told you to show me your _rash_ it would not have tripled in size. Right? Not following the exact same pattern as the curse victims from yesterday?”

Oikawa freezes, but he tries to play it off with a small laugh. Sugawara has known Oikawa far too long to be fooled that easily. “That’s just silly.”

“I’m going to go.” Sugawara forces himself to stand up. What he really, really wants to do is get on top of Oikawa and shake some sense into him. Maybe slap him a few times so he really gets an idea of what’s going on here. But Sugawara restrains himself. “I’m going to go help Kenma with the research.”

Sugawara walks towards the door frame. He points at Oikawa, who is trying his best to sit up right. “You are going to lay back down. And try to sleep your rash off. Okay?”

Oikawa smirks and there must be at least one god in this universe that is still on Oikawa’s side, because Oikawa has the audacity to look hot while being mostly incapcitated from a curse he doesn’t even believe in. “Bossy.”

Sugawara sighs. He wishes there was a door to the break room that he could shut. (There was, once upon a time. And then a tangled cable incident later, and there is now no door.) It would help give the conversation a final push in Sugawara’s direction. But there isn’t, so all Sugawara can do is slip out into the hallway and pretend that everything is okay.

* * *

“He’s not going to die,” Kuroo says, but his mouth is half full of food so it just comes out as a jumble of sounds that don’t quite connect. He swallows and then tries again. This time he actually makes sense.

The rest of the office is having lunch together, Oikawa still tucked into the break room and snoring away. Sugawara always brings Oikawa lunch, but since it doesn’t look like he’s actually going to be eating it, the rest of the team takes bits and pieces of what they like. Sugawara takes the extra sandwich; Kuroo takes the apple; Ennoshita takes the chips; Kenma takes the soda.

Sugawara takes a bite of his sandwich, thinking. What are they going to do about Oikawa? Kenma did his best and has a long list of purification processes ready to try out, but all the rituals have a common theme running through them: they need the person’s consent. And if Oikawa is anything, he is stubborn.

He’s not going to believe that he’s cursed, let alone let them do something about it.

“I’m going to agree with Kuroo here,” Kenma inputs. “I don’t think he’s going to die.”

Sugawara thinks of how Oikawa looked laying on that small sofa. But then he shoves that image out of his mind. “Do you really think he’s going to agree though? To being purified.”

Ennoshita shrugs. “I mean, if any of us asked him, probably not. But if you asked him, I’m sure that Oikawa would do it in a heartbeat.”

“I have no idea what that means.” Sugawara is lost. Oikawa isn’t going to crumble just because Sugawara says so. If that were the case, then this would be a simple fix. In fact, it would have been fixed already.

“Just ask him, Suga. He has a weak spot for you,” Ennoshita says.

“A huge gay crush,” Kuroo inputs.

“He does have it kind of bad for you,” Kenma admits. “I spend most of my time editing out scenes where you’re talking and he’s just staring at you.”

Sugawara feels himself flushing. He hates when he blushes because the redness takes over his entire face, going all the way from the tips of his ears to the bottom of his chin. He takes another bite of his sandwich to give him some time to think of a response. But then the chewing and the swallowing is done and Sugawara still doesn’t know what to say. “He’s not going to listen to me.”

Kuroo scoffs. “He’ll listen to you, Suga. You just have to ask nicely. Put your good face to use.”

“Oikawa doesn’t think curses even exist,” Sugawara points out, because it seems like everyone is missing a huge portion of the equation. Because, okay. Sure. Maybe Sugawara does have a bit of an influence on Oikawa’s actions, but Oikawa also doesn’t believe.

“Then when you ask him to do the purification,” Kenma says. He stares at Sugawara, in that Kenma-way of his that makes all the hairs on Sugawara’s body stand to attention. Kenma can be serious, when he wants to be. “Don’t ask him to do it for himself. Ask him to do it for you.”

“Kenma!” Kuroo says, throwing his hands up in the air. He grins. “That’s the best idea ever.”

Ennoshita hums. “That would probably work. Suga, if you say that you’re worried and you want to do the purification for _your_ own sake, Oikawa will agree. That man will do just about anything for you.”

Sugawara shakes his head. He can see the point that they’re trying to make, but Oikawa doesn’t do everything that Sugawara asks him to do. For example, Sugawara asks him— Okay. So they have a point. But that doesn’t excuse them from needing a backup plan. “So what happens when he still doesn’t agree?”

“Then we just knock him out,” Kenma says, voice flat. Everyone whips their head to stare at Kenma, surprised by the words that just came out of his mouth. Kenma’s expression sours when he realizes that everyone is looking at him. He puts his eyesight to the ground, frowning. “What? There are purification processes that you can do without the person’s consent. They just aren’t pleasant.”

Sugawara immediately thinks to all the exorcists he’s seen on television, where the person’s body writhes and fights against whatever cursed being made their home inside of their body. He can’t imagine Oikawa being in that type of situation. He doesn’t want to think of Oikawa in that situation.

But what’s the other end of that? Oikawa sleeping away in the backroom while the curse slowly takes over his body?

Sugawara takes another bite out of his sandwich.

“Not to sound crass,” Ennoshita says after a few seconds pass by in stunned silence. “But are we planning on recording today or not? Our schedule for the day is already messed up and it will probably be messed up for a while, until Oikawa gets better. But I would like to record something.”

Trust Ennoshita to think about the company and their videos. Not that it’s a bad thing, but Sugawara has been so in his own head thinking _Oikawa this_ and _Oikawa that_ he almost forgot the reason they were in this dilemma in the first place: their youtube channel.

“Let me be the co-host,” Kuroo says, grinning. He’s always trying to worm his way into Sugawara’s and Oikawa’s show, but he never actually wants to be in it. Sugawara even talked to him about it one time, fully offering to make him an official co-host. But all Kuroo did was shrug and say _Eh, not really my thing_. Yet then he’s always the first one to somehow meander into all their videos, adding unnecessary but ultimately funny content that makes it into the final cut.

Their fans love Kuroo. Sugawara can kind of understand the sentiment.

Kenma scoffs. “And what are you going to do as the co-host? Answer all of Oikawa’s Q&A questions for him?”

“Aw c’mon,” Kuroo replies. “You know that there are plenty of questions that were just sent for me.”

Sugawara thinks about it. The pros of filming the Q&A with just Kuroo: Kuroo is charismatic and he knows what he’s doing when he’s in front of the camera; plus the Q&A was supposed to be seated anyway, no need for Kuroo to hold the boom mic; and maybe Sugawara wants Oikawa to rest the most that he can.

The cons: Oikawa will have a meltdown when he finds out about it. But it’s not a real meltdown. He’ll just pout and act like he’s going to ignore Sugawara (As if the final decision would even be Sugawara’s. Ennoshita is the one that wears the pants at his company. Sugawara is just the belt.) until Sugawara agrees to take him out to dinner. Sugawara would call it a date in his head, even though it’s not.

Sugawara doesn’t want to deal with an Oikawa Tooru meltdown. Not with him cursed in the back room. But Oikawa is sleeping. And their schedule for this next week— not even including Oikawa being cursed— is a packed one. They need to get ahead while they can. “I’m down. Oikawa is probably going to be napping for the entire day, anyway.”

Ennoshita nods. “Great.” He grabs his phone and looks at the time. “Let’s take another 30 for lunch and then we can start preparing. Kenma, you have the questions prepped?”

“I’ll have to find the Kuroo ones,” Kenma replies. “But yeah, they’re ready to go.”

Kuroo scoffs. “Please, as if you don’t already have some of the questions ready for me.”

Kenma glares at Kuroo, but it’s softened by the big slurp of his drink that he takes at the same moment. They continue to hold eye contact until Kenma starts choking. The tension drops as Kuroo whacks Kenma across the back until he stops coughing.

“Awesome,” Ennoshita says and then that’s that. Even when things have been screwed to hell and back— almost literally in this case— they still manage to find their footing. That’s what Sugawara loves about his team so much. They’re resilient, hardworking, and most importantly, able to not freak out when Oikawa starts screaming.

* * *

The curse has quadrupled in size from when Sugawara last saw it. But then again, that was last night through a dumb selfie that was mostly Oikawa just trying to flex his muscles.

Now, though, Oikawa isn’t trying to impress anyone at all. If he was, he would at least try his best to make his crying face handsome. Sugawara has been friends with Oikawa for long enough to know that Oikawa has two crying faces. The first one is when he’s trying to get his way, using his waterworks and his gleaming puppy eyes to sway the person to his favor. That face is perfectly conceived, with just the right amount of sadness to warrant pity.

And then there’s the second crying face: it’s ugly. Oikawa has never been a pretty crier. When he cries his face blotches in concerning ways and every sob is full of tears and snot. Sugawara has only seen the second crying face three times.

The rest of the office has never seen it before and so Sugawara is almost proud when none of them freak out. Almost because, well, it’s kind of embarrassing to be proud of his friends for not freaking out over someone crying. Granted, they all run (Minus Kenma. He’ll run if he really has to, but when there are already three other grown men running, there doesn’t really need to be another one caught up in the mix.) towards the back room.

Oikawa is sitting upright on the couch, bare chested. His entire body is flushed red with a fever and he’s sweating. The curse on his arm is a solid black circle, wrapping itself around Oikawa’s arm and slowly edging its way towards his chest. His _lungs_.

This curse is going to drown him on dry land.

Sugawara is immediately by his side, putting his hand up to Oikawa’s forehead and feeling for his temperature. He’s almost too hot to touch, but now that he’s touching Oikawa, he never wants to let him go. Something protective curls itself around Sugawara and all Sugawara can think of is ways of making Oikawa feel better.

“Jesus, he might actually die,” Kuroo says, standing in the doorway with his eyes wide. Sugawara wants to go over and smack him, but luckily Ennoshita does that for him. “Did you really have to hit me that hard?”

“I’m going to go get some cold towels,” Ennoshita says and he drags Kuroo along with him. Kuroo goes with little protest, for which Sugawara is grateful for. Oikawa is still a sobbing mess and Sugawara adjusts himself so Oikawa can cry into his chest.

“I think I need to go to the hospital,” Oikawa says into Sugawara’s neck and that’s when Sugawara knows it’s truly bad. Oikawa refuses to go to the hospital, always insisting that he’s fine even when he rolls his ankle after being spooked by a ghost-esque noise. Or when he slices his palm open on a rusty nail. Or when he trips over his untied shoelaces while trying to give an interview and bangs his head on the concrete.

Oikawa always says that because he did sports for the majority of his life, because his best friend since birth is a sports trainer with excellent advice, because he’s just not feeling it, that he doesn’t have to go to the hospital.

And so Sugawara knows it’s bad. But it’s not like the hospital will help a curse.

Kenma is standing just outside the room, peering in and unsure what to do. “Should I go get the purification rituals?”

Sugawara nods. “Both types.” Oikawa might be willing to go to the hospital, but that doesn’t mean that he is also going to be willing to undergo a purification. Oikawa’s always been annoyingly stubborn: it’s one of his worst qualities.

Ennoshita and Kuroo arrive just as Kenma hurries off. Ennoshita comes with the cold towels and a bowl of cold water. He places them on the couch next to Sugawara, waits for Sugawara to manhandle Oikawa into a better position, and takes a towel and places it on Oikawa’s forehead.

Oikawa whimpers with the contact and part of Sugawara’s heart breaks. To go back to the very beginning, Sugawara’s soft for Oikawa in more ways than he can count. He loves seeing Oikawa first thing in the morning, his chirpy self (boosted by a cup of coffee) doing wonders to Sugawara’s perpetual morning blues. He loves working next to Oikawa and being able to see him smile. He loves seeing him passionate about the things he cares about.

Love, love, love.

Oikawa is not just the object of Sugawara’s infatuation. Sugawara is in love with him, which is a terrible thing to realize when said person is crying from the amount of suffering that he’s in.

“What’s wrong with me?” Oikawa cries. The towel on his head is already warm (Not a good sign!) and Sugawara is quick to change it out with a fresh one.

“You’re cursed.” Sugawara doesn’t want to talk any more than he has to because he’s holding himself together with a thin piece of string. The more he talks, the more the string wears down. The last thing that everybody needs is both Sugawara and Oikawa to be down for the count.

Oikawa frowns. “I’m not cursed.”

“Oh my god,” Kuroo says. He’s holding a camera, probably recording this entire thing. Sugawara doesn’t really care because there is no way that Oikawa is going to let any recording of his ugly crying face see the light of day. Oikawa would die before that happened.

And if Oikawa dies— well, they definitely won’t be using any of that footage.

Sugawara feels his anger bubble inside of him, starting from the center of his chest and working its way up his body. It’s hot acidic liquid, his anger. Sugawara swallows it down. It burns his throat. “Tooru, listen to me. You’re cursed. And the only way that you’re going to get better is through a purification ritual. Kenma has already looked up a few of them. You just need to want to do them.”

Almost as if on cue, Kenma’s there, gingerly walking into the room as if each one of his footfalls could trigger a landmine. He sets the papers next to Sugawara, his eyes wide with warning.

“Kenma,” Oikawa whines, sticking his hand out and grabbing Kenma by the wrist. Kenma jolts as if he’s been electrocuted and slips through Oikawa’s weak grasp. “Kenma, call an ambulance for me.”

Kenma narrows his eyes. “No. What is the hospital supposed to do? You’re cursed. They aren’t going to have anything to help you.”

Oikawa laughs but he only lasts a second before his laughter turns into a coughing fit. Kenma uses the distraction to tiptoe away.

Once Oikawa is done coughing, Sugawara switches out the towel on his head. “You’re cursed. Please just believe that.”

“I think I’m having a heart attack,” Oikawa replies, wincing. “My arm hurts and isn't your arm supposed to hurt when you’re having a heart attack?”

Sugawara sighs. There’s the anger again, bubbling closer and closer to the surface. He doesn’t know how long he is going to be able to keep his cool. “Oikawa you’re cursed. Cursed. How many times do I have to explain it?”

Oikawa groans and grabs his arm. Sugawara stares at the curse mark. It seems to stare back at him, the black color a pit of nothingness that _sees_ Sugawara, sees _into_ Sugawara and understands him for everything that he is. It understands his anger. It understands his love. It understands Sugawara better than anyone has ever been able to understand him.

It’s the only one that knows everything. And the knowledge of being _known_ , of being _seen_ as a whole and taken as such, is comforting enough for Sugawara to stop thinking about worldly things. He just thinks about how nice it would be to let himself go.

“Suga?”

“What’s up with him? Suga?”

“Um, Koushi? Are you okay?”

Sugawara blinks and all of sudden he’s holding Oikawa, his hot feverish skin almost burning. The entire room is staring at him with mixed emotions on their face. Kenma looks concerned and he’s holding more of the purification rituals in his hand with a tight grasp. Kuroo has dropped the camera and he’s staring with a startled look. Ennoshita’s face is wound up tight, unreadable.

And Oikawa is in his arms, his bottom lip trembling ever so slightly. “Koushi, what happened just now?”

“Suga almost got cursed too,” Ennoshita says, voice even but with a tint of fear in it that puts everyone in the room on edge. “I think this is a more powerful curse than we thought it was.”

“We should probably leave,” Kenma says, already in the hallway. “Who knows what kind of energy is going to spew when everything is said and done. I have no plans of getting cursed too.”

Kuroo nods. “Good plan. Suga, you got this on your own?”

“Will someone explain to me what’s going on?” Oikawa yells. He pushes himself off of Suga and sits upright. He’s still a feverery mess of sweat and grime, but he manages to hold himself together. “Because I feel like I’m dying and it seems that none of you guys are taking me seriously. Who gives a fuck about curses? I want to go to the hospital.”

Oikawa moves to stand up, but it’s slow going when most of his strength has already been expended on making himself sit up. “I’m going to take myself to the hospital, since none of you _care_.”

Sugawara doesn’t care? Then what was he doing, worrying about Oikawa all of last night and all of today? What other feeling was it that made Sugawara rush from the other room and make Oikawa as comfortable as possible while he was dealing with this curse?

Care? _Care?_ Sugawara doesn’t care?

Give him a fucking break.

Sugawara’s anger doesn’t bubble over. It explodes.

“Sit the fuck down,” Sugawara says and his words are clipped and nasty and they make everyone in the room freeze. “Tooru, I said _sit down._ Do you think we don’t care about you? You’re cursed! Fucking cursed! How many times do I have to say it before it actually gets through your thick skull?

“We’re trying to get this damn curse off of you and if you would just sit down and _listen_ to what we have to say, then maybe you wouldn’t be suffering so much about it. But, no, instead you’re here, crying and complaining that you don’t believe in curses while we all watch this curse attack you. Do you even know what happens with this curse? It drowns you. On dry land. It somehow takes all the damn oxygen out of your lungs. Death by drowning is _painful_ and you don’t even have the benefit of passing out before it kills you. And goddammit if you don’t just agree to the purification and I have to confess my stupid, dumb feelings to your corpse, I will kill you myself.”

Sugawara’s chest heaves with his anger. He feels hot and out of breath, as if he sprinted a race. His body aches with the sudden outburst, but he doesn’t think it was a bad thing. Sugawara rarely gets overwhelmingly mad like that. He rarely yells, instead choosing to be pointed and curt with his replies when he’s angry. He’s found being passive aggressive often gets the job done with less effort on his part.

But there was nothing about that that was passive.

Everyone stares at him. And it’s not the type of staring that Sugawara expected. He expected everyone to be surprised, but ultimately thankful for his outburst. But everyone is staring at him as if he said something he really, really shouldn’t have.

Oikawa is gaping like a fish.

“I’m leaving,” Kenma says and he grabs Kuroo in one hand and Ennoshita in the other and drags them out of the break room. “We’re leaving.” Neither of them even put up a fight.

“Did… Do you mean that?” Oikawa asks, all the fight drained out of him. He still isn’t sitting down, but some gentle prodding from Sugawara has him easily back on the couch. He still looks like a mess, with too hot skin and an unflattering flush from the fever. “You like me?”

Sugawara cringes. This is not how he wanted to confess. In his head, the confession was going to take place on one of the many dates-not-dates they took after work together. Maybe it was going to be in the park, maybe it was going to be over a nice meal. It wasn’t supposed to be mid-rant while Oikawa might be dying.

“Yes,” Sugawara replies. He reaches out and cups Oikawa’s cheek in his hand. There are too many things here to pay attention to. He hopes that the curse doesn’t get worse while they’re having their heart-to-heart. “I did mean that.” He slides his thumb to the other side of Oikawa’s face and squeezes. He squeezes Oikawa’s face a bit too hard. “But I also meant that I will kill you if you don’t let me perform a purification ritual.”

Oikawa sputters, his lips pressed together by Sugawara’s fingers. Sugawara lets his hand fall and Oikawa rubs his jaw, frowning. “Was all the yelling really necessary?”

Sugawara rolls his eyes. Oikawa is so much sometimes.

“I like you too, you know,” Oikawa says, suddenly shy. If he didn’t have a fever, he would probably be blushing. “I know this is a bad time to say it— Oh.” Oikawa curls in on himself, gripping his cursed arm. “This shit hurts.”

“Curses will do that to you.” Sugawara kneels down and finds the papers that Kenma had given him. He rifles through them until he finds the one ritual he’s familiar with. He hasn’t done many purifications, but he knows what he is doing for the most part. For Oikawa, he has to know what he’s doing. “I’m going to start this purification, okay?”

Oikawa looks up, face twisted in pain. “But—”

Sugawara taps him lightly on the top of his head. “If you agree to this purification I will take you anywhere you want for our first date. And I’ll pay.”

Oikawa smiles, but then the curse must act up because the expression quickly dissolves into a grimace. “Okay. I agree.”

Sugawara looks at the paper again and then starts chanting.

* * *

Oikawa makes Kuroo delete the footage of the entire thing. Sugawara laughs while watching Oikawa physically sit down at Kuroo’s desk and force him to delete the video and audio files. It is probably for the best, even if Ennoshita laments the deleted footage. Kuroo even got Sugawara’s heated confession and while he likes their fans, there are certain things that Sugawara doesn’t want them to know.

And his and Oikawa’s budding relationship is definitely one of those things.

Their mutual confession doesn’t really change anything. If anything, it gives Oikawa more teasing ammunition because _Really, Koushi? You chose that time to confess? You are really funny, aren’t you?_

But for the most part, Oikawa and Sugawara do things as they normally do. Oikawa still brings Sugawara coffee on the mornings he wakes up with enough time to do so. Sugawara still makes two lunches, even though they end up trading half of their items with the rest of their team. They still go out together after work finishes for the day.

The only difference is the intention behind all of it. And then of course, the fact that their dates are officially called dates. And Oikawa is now free to hold Sugawara’s hand whenever he wants and Sugawara is free to kiss Oikawa whenever he wants.

Then again, not totally free. Because they’re in the middle of filming their Q&A right now (Kuroo is here as their third co-host, as predicted.) and there is a shine to Oikawa’s smile that makes Sugawara want to melt right into Oikawa and kiss him silly.

But he can’t do that. Not now. Too many cameras. Too many people. Too many questions that Sugawara should be paying attention to.

“Looks like the lovebirds got all distracted,” Kuroo quips, but it’s lighthearted. “Don’t worry, Kenma can cut that.”

Kenma, off screen and holding the fishbowls of questions for Kuroo and Sugawara, frowns. “I really don’t appreciate the extra work.”

“Anyway,” Sugawara interrupts. “Let’s pick the next question.”

Oikawa grins. “That’s me!” He puts his hand in his fishbowl of questions and pulls out a rolled piece of paper. “Hm,” he says, reading it. “This one says: Oikawa, do you finally believe in the supernatural?”

Sugawara and Kuroo both try to stifle their laughter. Try being the key word there. Sugawara is successful, but an awfully poignant second of laughter makes its way out of Kuroo’s mouth. And that one sound is all it takes for all of them, minus Oikawa, to break down.

It’s really not that funny of a question, but the timing of it all hits the hardest. The curse with Oikawa was just a week ago and so the day is still fresh in all of their minds. The question is comical at this point. Of course Oikawa believes in the supernatural now. He almost died from it.

“Well,” Oikawa says when the laughter finally dies down. It’s been a few minutes, because Kuroo was laughing so hard that he fell off of his chair. Which was so funny that it started everyone on a second wave of laughter, this time with Oikawa included. “That’s the whole point of our series, right? To see if the supernatural exists or not. I feel like answering this question kind of cheapens our entire premise.”

“Answer the question,” Sugawara says, smiling. He leans into Oikawa’s side and his smile grows when Oikawa instinctively leans back. “Is the supernatural real or not?”

Oikawa huffs. “I was trying for suspense! Keep our views up!”

Kuroo covers his mouth as if he’s telling a secret to the camera and only the camera. But his voice is loud enough for everyone to hear. “Oikawa there got cursed the other day. He made me delete all the footage.”

“Hey!” Oikawa says. “Okay so I was cursed and the supernatural definitely does exist, but that’s my story to tell, not yours!”

“So you admit it?” Ennoshita asks from behind the camera. “You admit that the supernatural exists?”

“Yes,” Oikawa replies. He’s frowning. “Happy?”

Sugawara presses a quick kiss to Oikawa’s cheek. Kenma will have to edit that out too, but Sugawara couldn’t help himself for a second longer. He’ll bring Kenma a pack of those energy drinks he likes tomorrow. “Very happy.”

Sure, Oikawa did have to get cursed and have a near-death experience to finally admit it, but Sugawara is still happy. Sometimes, things just work out as they are supposed to.

Supernatural or not, at least Sugawara still has Oikawa by his side.

And that’s all that really matters.

**Author's Note:**

> ayo ayo thank u for ur kudos and comments :^) 
> 
> im on [twt](https://twitter.com/JINClTY) and [tumblr](http://onceand-forall.tumblr.com/)... plz talk to me about any and all setters in hq..... i think about them all the time


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